The lower house of parliament’s Budget Committee approved
the emergency-aid package at a meeting late yesterday, Otto
Fricke, a committee member for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
Free Democratic Party coalition partner, said by phone today.
Germany’s share of the aid package is about 6.25 billion euros,
the lower house said in its HIB newsletter.

Europe is in the throes of a sovereign-debt crisis that
spread from Greece to Ireland and threatens to engulf the entire
euro area. The market decline since the European Union bailout
of Ireland was announced on Nov. 28 is exaggerated and doesn’t
necessitate a reaction by policy makers, Schaeuble said in Paris
late yesterday.

Bonds, stocks and the euro rallied yesterday as markets
interpreted a comment from European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet as a signal policy makers may step up their
response. Observers “are tending to underestimate the
determination of governments” to shore up the euro region’s
stability, Trichet told lawmakers in Brussels yesterday.

‘No Economic Foundation’

The German aid was passed with the support of the
opposition Social Democrats and Greens, Fricke said. Only the
post-Communist Left Party failed to back aid.

“The current yield spreads for Irish bonds have no
economic foundation,” Norbert Barthle, Budget Committee
spokesman for Merkel’s bloc of Christian Democrats and the
Christian Social Union, said in an e-mailed statement. “We must
counter speculation against the euro and refute the speculation
against the euro in an economically reasonable way.”

Barthle said Merkel’s bloc has “no doubt” that Ireland
will meet its obligations under the rescue package.